Microsoft Europe settled a music download lawsuit

Microsoft's European division has settled a lawsuit filed against it by a small company called E-Data. E-Data filed its lawsuit against Microsoft's European division, alongside with British online music service OD2, ISP Tiscali and HMV, claiming that they violate its patent that covers downloading information to a "tangible object", such as CDR.

Music services operated by four sued companies all allow consumers to download music and burn it to CDR discs. Now Microsoft's decision to settle the case has given more validity to E-Data's patent claims. Microsoft has licensed E-Data's patent to be used worldwide, but companies didn't disclose financial terms of their agreement.

E-Data was granted the patent way back in 1985 and its been tested in U.S. courts successfully, when there can be proven a situation where a retailer specifically sells information to be transferred onto a physical media, most notably removable media (which is the case with various music download stores where users pay premium for the right to also burn the purchased track to a CDR). E-Data holds patents in United States and also in Germany, UK, France, Austria, Switzerland, the Netherlands, Italy, Luxembourg, Belgium and Sweden. However, company's patent expired in January, 2003 in States, but is still valid in various European countries.